Confessions of a Cat-holic (44)

Unlike the sheepish Christians in SPCC, the girls in St Francis were truly all wolverines. The school culture in St Francis was way more cut-throat. Afterall, we were trained up by the Italians. What the Godfather depicted in the movie was true. We would speak softly, often of love, but we slaughtered each other behind our backs in sneaky ways, which of course the police couldn't track. Well, many of the police were our girls and our girls' husbands anyways. Also, Italy was notorious for its mafia and underground shadiness.

Catholics rarely talked down others. Remember when I said we had to give morning prayers and kissed Mother Mary's feet in assembly every day? We liked to give praise to our opponents and then destroyed them in absolute cruelty. Why? I wouldn't know. It was just part of our culture and training. Why would we ill talk others or bring others down by words? Come on, destroying one's reputation was the last thing we would like to achieve, almost as light-hearted as underage drinking in a New York speakeasy. That wouldn't inflict any real damage to our opponents. We didn't like that. We wanted real annihilation.

I didn't mean to put SPCC down when I commented on their language proficiencies. Actually, despite the overall subpar language abilities among average students in SPCC, a few of them were way ahead of the curve. Clairol, for example, would speak English at home. Maybe that was because Clairol's mother was also an old girl of St Francis? Clairol's summer activities were skiing in New Zealand and horse riding in outback Switzerland. Obviously, that was some classy way of showing off her wealth. None of the girls in St Francis was as posh as the Wu's family. We did have a few girls residing in a mansion in Kadoorie Hill or the peak, but we simply would not go that far to raise a horse or buy a vineyard per se. But ignoring all that flashiness, Clairol's English was quite impressive. She could use big words and speak authentically with a native American accent. Daryl's English was not bad either. I would estimate, out of a class of 240 students, maybe six to ten of them actually commanded English like a native. But I would not give SPCC the credits for their exceptional English proficiencies. The school obviously did not contribute to the lifting of their English abilities. These 10 people were usually sons or daughters of doctors and lawyers and they acquired new vocabulary and a native tongue not via the day school, but often through excessive tutoring with home-schooled instructors.

I had come a long way since then to have been able to command the way I used English now. Daryl told me that people called him by the nickname "chubby", which was translated to Chinese as "cho babe". Cho was his last name, so I guessed that was a bit of a pun too? Needless to say, Daryl was a bit overweight. But I would not call him fat. It was just that the rest of the peers in SPCC looked a bit malnutritious. Daryl was just comparatively a bit more built than the average Joe.

As a confession, I did not know the word "chubby" until I met Daryl. I told you English was not my strongest subject. I was fairly fluent in English for daily usage but I never bothered to try any flamboyant language. But even so, "chubby" was not at all a high level word. Would you say I was intimidated? No, not at all. On the contrary, I actually became more motivated to brush up my English word bank.

I would not tell the Jackson 5 that I didn't even know the word "chubby", of course. But since then, I was more determined than ever to advance my English usage with a foundation quite solid enough to accelerate my improved learning. I listened to English songs, recited lyrics from the pop songs, watched American TV shows, and read British magazines. I didn't want to look any way less competent than my rivals.

But I was sneaky enough not to let them know my secret talents in Chinese writing. They tried to belittle the humanities students by calling them "liberal" artists. Thanks to the civil studies in early elementary school years, they regarded Hong Kong as the "cultural desert", a place where no arts graduates could thrive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fxh7jAJR8U